


No Mask Could Hide

by Maple



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Carnival, F/M, Gen, Quote Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-08
Updated: 2011-04-08
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maple/pseuds/Maple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tessa waits while Duncan goes off with another Immortal for a challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Mask Could Hide

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a quote challenge, so the following (slightly modified) was used within the story: "And even on this night of masks, he noted that those who spoke French did not mingle with those who spoke English. Some things Carnival did not change." A Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly.

Tessa found a small niche along the old stone wall that wasn't yet occupied and rested there. Duncan had asked her to return to their hotel room, but Tessa found she couldn't yet do that. Out here she could watch the skies, listen past the glaring music, know if revelers passing by her spoke of sudden, unexplained electrical outages. At the hotel, she could only wait. At least here, even if she still waited, she waited knowing what signs to look for. She could return to the hotel at a moment's notice from this spot, where, if she didn't know who had won the challenge, at least she would know the challenge was over.

A group of young local women, baring more flesh than sense, and happily past the point of too much imbibed, sauntered by, but they spoke only of the impetuous American boys that tried to talk to and cajole them. Contemptuous, they laughed, and made jokes about how inadequate the boys would have been.

Tessa was glad for her feathered and sequined mask. She liked to consider herself a sophisticate, and certainly she was no saint, but the gutter words the girls employed had made her pause.

Other groups passed by, and Tessa listened to each when she could understand the language, but heard no word of any strange occurrence, which tightened the tension in her stomach until she thought she might be ill on the street.

Tessa wanted to curse, kick the cornerstone of the building she sat near, or perhaps search the streets, pushing aside the throngs of Carnival attendees, looking for Duncan. But she knew he would be somewhere else, where there were no eyes to witness, and he would not be happy with her being there. In fact, he probably would be upset when he learned she was not waiting patiently in the locked-in hotel room.

This was supposed to have been a pleasant trip--a long weekend getaway for some dancing, drinking, enjoyment of Carnival, on the bold-faced pretense of looking for items for the shop--and instead it was a reminder of the things she had recently learned when Connor had visited. They had left Richie at home to be a voice on the phone if impatient customers were not satisfied with their answering service since they had temporarily closed the store, and as a not-so-small test of Richie's reliability. This trip had been meant to be time for them, for her and Duncan, to reconnect and have some fun, to get away from the horrible Game that seemed to pervade Seacouver like a dense fog that never lifted.

But even here, in this warmer clime, the Game followed them still.

Another blissful entourage passed by her small niche, with one of the group telling an outlandish tale and the others amiably listening and encouraging him to greater lengths of description. She couldn't see their faces--tonight almost everyone wore masks--but she could see the sweep of the story-teller' s arms, and his voice carried self-deprecation for the sake of amusement and humor. Here the masks--most crafted carefully of feathers and beads and glitter, but some bought on the spur of the moment and of dubious durability-- may have hidden the faces, but their voices gave them away.

Even on this night of masks, she noted that those who spoke French did not mingle with those who spoke English. Some things Carnival did not change. She would have laughed, just a little, because at the moment language and culture seemed so tame--what good were masks for Immortals? There was no masking them from each other.

Tessa counted the time in the number of tumblers that passed by and how long it took for the Harlequin girl to jingle by. When she found that she could no longer concentrate easily to distinguish English from French, or untangle the words to form sentences of sense, she rose from her small seat and entered the cascading flow along the sidewalk.

She found herself at the hotel a few moments later, where the lobby was festive but calmer, the party atmosphere transitioning away to nothing as the hallways stretched out. Duncan wasn't in the room and she gravitated to the balcony, where she stood watching the streams of people passing. This far away, looking down, they only became a blur of color, as if paint buckets had been overturned in the street, flowing down and away, getting swept elsewhere, leaving rivulets of mucky chaos behind.

Behind her, she finally heard the key turn in the lock, and Duncan entered the room. He looked…perfect.

He smiled at her and held out a hand.

She went to him and he enveloped her in a hug.

"What happened?"

He playfully put his mask on her head, one of the feathers on it at a strange angle so that it tickled her cheek, and Tessa realized she'd long ago lost her own mask.

"Nothing," he said. "He was here for Carnival, the same as us, so we talked for a few minutes, and then we went our separate ways. I was worried when you weren't here, so I went looking for you."

"I needed some air."

He considered her for a moment and then nodded, subject dropped for now. "There's still plenty of partying left in the night. I did promise to take you dancing. And we still need dinner."

Tessa took a deep breath, did the mental equivalent of squaring her shoulders, and smiled. "I'll need another mask."

Duncan brushed his thumb along her jaw line and smiled that secret, odd smile that he sometimes had when he looked at her. "That's easy enough."


End file.
